


Flutters in a Cage

by stoic_swan



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alpha Will Graham, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Caring Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal (TV) Season/Series 03, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter is a Cannibal, Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Hannibal Lecter, Omega Verse, Protective Will Graham, Scenting, Sexual Content, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:16:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28686225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoic_swan/pseuds/stoic_swan
Summary: Five months after Hannibal surrendered to the FBI in Will's driveway, his trial is well underway. Exhausted, Will Graham has hidden away in Wolf Trap, avoiding all trial coverage, until it's his turn to testify.If Will had turned on the news in the previous weeks, however, he would have learned a vital piece of information: The Chesapeake Ripper is carrying a child conceived before his arrest.The world has decided Bedelia, an alpha, must be the other parent because of their time in Florence together, but Hannibal refuses to answer any question regarding his unborn child. Will, naturally, understands why.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 56
Kudos: 230





	1. Chapter 1

Five months, two weeks, three days. 

Will felt each second of that time as he stood in the attorney’s office watching the clock tick down the seconds until he would be escorted into the courtroom and to the witness stand. Will hadn’t attended any previous days of Hannibal’s trial-- days devoted to murders that occurred long before Will and Hanibal’s paths had intersected-- and didn’t intend on returning once he was permitted to step down. He had similarly avoided all forms of the news, from radio to television to internet clickbait. The world could have ended during those five months that Will sequestered himself in Wolf Trap, Virginia, and he wouldn’t have been the wiser. The days between when Will had last seen Hannibal kneeling in his driveway surrounded by FBI agents and now were a bland smear of time in Will’s memory; although, to be fair, anything resembling normalcy was bound to seem lackluster when held in comparison to the soaring highs and plummeting depths Will and Hannibal had experienced in the preceding months. Thus, while Will dreaded his day on the stand, he also recognized the time spent between the arrest and today’s final encounter with Hannibal was pleasant only in the way that waiting for a taxi might be, and he was anxious for it to finally be behind him 

The halls were quieting as the seconds ticked down to 9:30 AM, the start of the day’s proceedings. Will lingered in the office, reading the attorney’s diplomas displayed on the walls and the spines of leatherbound books on his sole bookshelf. Undoubtedly, a few reporters would wait until the last possible second to enter the courtroom in anticipation of catching the elusive Will Graham. If they wanted to play chicken, though, they needed to choose a competitor who, unlike them, wouldn’t be locked out of the courtroom once the doors closed. All in all, watching an officer slam a door shut in Freddie Lounds’ face would almost be worth dealing with her colorful style of questioning for a few minutes-- as well as the resulting article about how the media was being tossed onto the street by overaggressive guards. 

The office door cracked open, and Will straightened the lapels of his jacket unnecessarily. The DA peered inside and gave Will a solemn nod. Will remembered the man as one of the attorneys assisting the prosecution during his own circus of a trial, and the lawyer’s steely version of professionalism throughout the pretrial preparations gave Will the distinct impression that he thought Will himself ought to be sitting alongside Hannibal at the defendant’s table. Ostensibly, they were on the same side, though, so they would perform together for these few hours and then, God willing, go their separate ways for the rest of their natural lives. Will followed the man into the hall, glancing around quickly to be sure it was truly cleared, and found the rest of his welcome committee awaiting him: Jack Crawford and Alana Bloom stood just outside the courtroom doors, looking past the attorney making a beeline for them and straight at Will.

“Dr. Bloom, Agent Crawford,” the attorney greeted far more politely than the stern nod he’d given Will. He slipped between them into the court without waiting for acknowledgment. 

A smile spread across Jack’s face, his grin brighter than Will remembered. He would be happy, though, wouldn’t he? Will was alive, on time, and visibly healthy while Hannibal was a few vindictive jury members away from lethal injection. Alana, meanwhile, watched Will with subdued friendliness, the corners of her red lips lifted enough to almost resemble the woman she used to be in spite of the intensity of her gaze. 

“It’s good to see you, Will,” Jack said with a hand coming to Will’s shoulder. “You look well.”

He really did think Will had crawled off to the forests of Virginia and wasted away. 

“You, too, Jack,” Will responded evenly. “Alana.”

Alana watched his face, eyes scanning across his features in search of something. She wasn’t confident in Will’s fortitude-- that much was obvious-- but her distance spoke to something more. A question of loyalty, perhaps, could be read in the furrow of her brow. 

“Are you ready for this, Will?” she asked bluntly. 

The sardonic chuckle that burst from Will’s throat as he looked at the ceiling made Alana’s mouth drop into a tight, straight line. He sensed her desire to remind him of how serious the matter was or to ask him if he was _okay_ , but she remained silent and unwaveringly focused on the man before her. 

“Was there a choice?” Will asked in response, challenging Alana with his own gaze. 

“Would you be here if there had been?” she shot back.

Jack’s smile had faded and his hand fell away, but he was too pleased to be ruffled by the tension around him. The alpha’s demeanor and scent reflected his calm.

“Almost there, Will,” Jack reassured. 

Will nodded, seeing the futility in arguing now. Alana’s eyes hadn’t left Will’s, and he could see the worry in them. Their tempers settling, he also noticed the darkness beneath her eyes, concealed well with make-up, and noted the looser lines of her clothing. Five months since Hannibal’s arrest meant five months since Mason’s death; just because Will’s life had become frozen in time, it didn’t mean the rest of the world had experienced the same phenomenon. A deep, discreet inhale confirmed what Will suspected: Alana was pregnant. He immediately felt guilty and looked at his unpolished shoes. 

A child, innocent and wanted and loved, was to be brought into the web spun by his mothers and a murderer. The stakes seemed to always find new, unsettling ways to rise.

“I can do this,” Will said to the ground. 

Jack breathed deeply, scent still suggesting nothing but tranquility.

“You’ve given a deposition, you’ve met with the DA-- nothing to worry about.”

The sounds of the courtroom began to die down just beyond the minutely cracked door, and Will’s stomach flipped within his core. 

Will sighed and let his hands find his pockets. No, nothing to worry about at all. 

“Have either of you testified yet?”

The pause Will’s question was met stretched too long. He glanced up and caught Alana and Jack looking intently at one another before they returned their focus to the man in front of them. Alana’s concern had risen another rung, and Jack no longer exuded the satisfaction of a man on the cusp of heard-earned justice. 

“You haven’t kept up with the trial?” Alana questioned, voice eerily composed. 

Will looked back and forth between them, frowning. 

“I didn’t feel the compulsion to relive the worst moments of my life,” Will snapped. 

Alana’s whitening face turned toward Jack, jaw tight. The towering agent didn’t need to turn toward her to know he was being both scolded and pleaded with. 

“Jack?” Will prompted. 

An officer appeared in the sliver of the doorway before Jack could decide what to say. 

“Mr. Will Graham, you’re being called to the stand,” the stranger tersely summoned.

Will’s eyes were still on Jack-- still waiting. He was too familiar with this feeling. 

Jack’s tone was sure and steady enough that the younger man almost believed him when he said, “Nothing has changed, Will.”

Then, the doors were open and all eyes were cast to the back of the courtroom, and Will was being led down the aisle toward the judge and the witness stand at her side. The mingling scents in the room-- perfumes, colognes, lotions, and blockers of all stripes mixed with the natural scents of the crowd members-- rose in a suffocating wave. Will was grateful for it; it meant he only caught the barest hint of Hannibal’s own unique notes for the seconds he was ushered through the gate and between the prosecution and defense teams. 

His mind was too noisy, too crowded, too busy securing itself against intrusive forces to fret over Jack’s evasiveness and whatever information he didn’t know. It was too late now anyway. Will took his first, furtive glimpse of Hannibal as one hand was laid on the Bible and the other was raised in oath. When Will had envisioned this moment during his idler moments over the previous months-- brushing his teeth, washing dishes, trying in vain to fall asleep-- Hannibal had been clothed in red and black with perfectly slicked hair. Lecter would paint the perfect image of the fallen angel, saving the beauty of the world one exquisite murder at a time. In life, Hannibal now appeared infuriatingly untouched by the whole business of his trial, his navy blue suit plain but immaculate and his hair swept in the same almost casual style it had been in when he and Will first met. Hannibal did not bore into Will’s soul from the defendant’s table; instead, he glanced at Will dispassionately then stared at the bailiff’s back with no expression save mild interest. 

The jury would think he was watching Will coolly, but Will knew better. Hannibal Lecter, who had funneled an ear down Will’s throat, wouldn’t meet his eyes. 

It pissed Will off more than a little, and he wanted nothing more than to tell the bailiff to step aside so that he could tell the son of a bitch sitting only a few yards away that he _would_ look Will in the eyes and listen to every last word Will had to say or Will would strangle him with his own handcuffs. 

Will sat down in the wooden chair by the judge as the bailiff walked away, Bible in hand. The questions were anticipated-- a factual recounting of what occurred between them and because of them, the most important parts omitted because they simply didn’t matter within the black and white lines of the legal system. Will answered sharply and concisely and tried not to look like he wanted to catch Hannibal’s eye. They were locked in a dance where Will could feel Hannibal looking at him only when Will was focused on the attorney, but when Will could spare a glance at Hannibal, the doctor seemed transfixed by a point just over Will’s shoulder. 

If this was part of Hannibal’s lawyer’s plan to shake Will as a witness, it was brilliant. 

For two hours, Will answered questions and follow-up questions; he deflected insinuations, dissected photographs, and elaborated on every diagnosis he’d ever personally received. By the time Will was finally allowed to step down from the stand and hide away in a spot saved for him by Jack Crawford, the journalists in the room were chomping at the bit to run outside and report every sordid and grizzly detail of Will’s story and the families of Hannibal’s victims were visibly exhausted. The judge called a recess for lunch; Will wondered when he would ever be able to eat a full meal again. 

Jack was speaking to Will-- _at_ Will-- meaningless words about how well he did, while Will watched a small swarm of guards approach Hannibal to lead him away. Will would guess he wasn’t eating many full meals these days either; thinking of Hannibal turning green at a tray of instant potatoes and meatloaf was a small comfort. Many others in the courtroom were also watching the spectacle of the well-dressed doctor rising to be escorted by the gang of armed officers, so Will allowed himself this moment of unabashed observation. It could be the last time he saw Hannibal in a suit that didn’t have an inmate number stitched somewhere on it, and that alone seemed momentous enough to warrant a memory. 

Will watched Hannibal’s back as he stood, blue suit jacket hung in a perfect line across broad shoulders. Hannibal didn’t lower his arm to button the jacket-- impossible in the cuffs, maybe-- but he did seem to be arching in a small stretch. Will wondered if the confines of a cage were already eating away at his powerful, purposeful body; he hoped Alana would be a kinder keeper than Frederick once the BSHCI finished the transition from Dr. Chilton’s reign to Dr. Bloom’s. To his side, Will heard Jack saying his name, trying to get his attention, but Jack could wait just these few seconds longer. Hannibal was led around the table he had previously sat at, jacket gaping, and for a fraction of a second, amber eyes looked into the crowd and _saw_ Will. 

The moment was too fast to capture, but Will had spent hours studying the guarded face of Hannibal Lecter-- he could read the man’s signals from across the most crowded of rooms. But Hannibal did not hold the contact-- instead, his gaze flickered down, then back to Will’s face, then toward the door he would be led to. By instinct or habit, Will tracked where Hannibal’s eyes led, moving down the man’s form. However, unlike Hannibal’s own trained gaze, Will’s eyes stopped halfway down Hannibal’s long body and froze. Standing with his arms bent so that his wrists were held up in front of his chest, blazer still open wide, Hannibal’s body told Will all that Jack and Alana couldn’t. 

Jack and Alana would never have been able to adequately explain what Will needed to know if only because they could not understand so much between him and Hannibal.

They couldn’t understand why refusing to meet Will’s eyes was a small act of protection today. 

They couldn’t understand why the hint of Hannibal’s scent sung to a primal center in Will’s brain, humming songs of home and companionship. 

They couldn’t understand why what passed between Hannibal and Will after Muskrat Farm was both a union and a separation.

And they sure as hell couldn’t understand why the slightest swell of an otherwise toughened body would knock the air out of Will’s chest.


	2. Chapter 2

Sitting on the bench behind the prosecution’s table, Will’s body tried to curl in on itself, away from the scene around him. His stomach twisted in cramping knots, the coffee and dry toast he’d choked down that morning crawling perilously higher, and his ears hummed with the seashore roar of his pulse. Even as his face heated, the rest of Will’s body ran cold with pins and needles. He dug his hands into his pockets again and, feeling truly ill, rose from the bench jerkily, body turning immediately toward the exit. 

Jack’s bulky frame followed closely on Will’s heels out of the courtroom, both driving him forward and creating a barrier between Will and the journalists who might attempt to trail after him. The whirring clicks of shutters and the shouts of reporters droned around Will, but only fragments were reaching his consciousness. The fragments pitched at him-- _insanity plea, Dr. Lecter’s testimony, death penalty_ \-- were too expected to seem believable. The dull-edged thought that the media didn’t know the truth struck Will as nearly hysterical, and he fixed his eyes on the ground in front of him as he maneuvered through the crowded aisle, slipped through the oak-paneled doors, dodged the second throng of reporters awaiting him in the hall, and found his way to the DA’s unremarkable office. 

Alana was already seated in a leather chair in front of the attorney’s desk when Will entered, Jack only a step behind him. Thankfully, the attorney had not yet found his way back to the makeshift command center, and when Jack closed the door, the three were alone again, saved from the din of the buzzing crowd exiting the courthouse for lunch. Will stood between Alana and Jack, statue-still with his back against the wall. Just because the media had yet to work out the spectacular new heights Will’s poor decision-making had reached, that didn’t mean those closest to the matter at hand were quite so oblivious. Will thought again of how he had avoided the news coverage of Hannibal’s trial to begin the impossible task of excising the parts of himself intertwined with the other man and felt that nudge of sick amusement bubble up again: Leave it to Hannibal to prove how very foolish Will was for believing they could ever become unentangled. 

“Surprised us, too,” Jack broke the silence, voice quieter than usual. 

Blue eyes widened, darted upward, and examined Crawford’s face. The faint frown and deepening lines of his features were too gentle. 

Alana sighed from her chair and shifted as she crossed her legs. “I thought you knew. The last two weeks have been a circus.”

Jack and Alana watched Will while trying not to look like it, eyes nearly averted but still waiting for a reaction. Although Will admittedly did not have any prior experience as the father-- _oh god_ \-- of a serial killer’s fetus, he did not think this was the kind of treatment one would receive. 

“How’d he hide it?” Will asked detachedly. He tried to imagine what he would say if he was, for once, uninvolved in the mess Hannibal found himself in. 

Alana and Jack met one another’s eyes again, and Will felt the full weight of his stupidity for coming to the trial uninformed of the proceedings. Alana looked back at him first and blinked slowly. It was the face of a person deciding how much to tell the unhinged man on her doorstep in order to best halt further questions.

“He didn’t,” Alana stated matter-of-factly. “We did.” 

Will’s brows knit together as he waited for her to continue. 

“The doctor who performed his initial physical ran four blood tests before he told Frederick. Kept hoping he was wrong.”

“Too late for a fifth?” Will asked wryly, feigning exasperation. 

Alana settled into the chair, resting her back against the cushion. Will assumed he must seem less like a caged animal when he was being sarcastic. 

Alana smirked as she replied, “Too late to do anything but wait. We gave him options, but as a principle, Hannibal chooses chaos whenever convenient.”

A bristling twinge in Wil’s chest caught him off-guard. It was not Hannibal’s love of chaos that had led him to choose to see these nine months through to their inescapable conclusion. Well, not entirely at least.

“TattleCrime reported it the first day of the trial,” Jack added. “Freddie Lounds knew before then. Guards aren’t paid enough.” 

“Hannibal’s will be,” Alana interjected, frowning. 

“You think anyone will buy the insanity claim?” Will asked skeptically. It seemed he’d missed quite a bit as of late.

Alana huffed and let her chin fall to rest in the arm supported by the chair. “No jury will execute a pregnant omega. His attorney is working the behavioral endocrinology angle, and they’ve gotten a psychiatrist to declare him legally insane. I foresee Hannibal and I spending many years together.”

Will’s head swam with the information, processing each new detail while still wholly unable to fathom the most important fact he’d learned so far that day. 

“Who the hell would declare Hannibal Lecter insane?”

“Frederick Chilton,” Jack supplied dryly. 

Will closed his eyes and leaned his head back for just a few seconds as he imagined Chilton’s testimony. Yes, the man certainly would do anything to avoid being eaten. 

Speaking to the ceiling, Will continued trying to piece together what had occurred without asking too much. “After the--” _baby is born_ “--birth, what happens?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Alana commented. “Millenia of evolution compel us to forsake ourselves for our children from the day they are born. And then, there’s Dr. Du Maurier.”

_Bedelia._ Will crossed his arms over his chest, a growl too close to the surface. It would be so simple to just believe Bedelia had sired the child in question, but Will remembered with aching clarity the sweetened scent of preheat in an Italian villa. When everything had promptly gone to hell in a handbasket shortly thereafter, all worries about impending heats were dashed as the scent vanished and more pressing matters-- like Will not losing his face to Mason Verger-- arose. Although, to be entirely honest, even if he had consciously noticed the shift in scent, Will knew he would likely have attributed it to stress delaying the onset of a true heat. Will would have clutched at that explanation like a lifeline because the only other non-medical method of clearing up those pesky preheat symptoms was successful mating. 

Leave it to Will Graham to impregnate a serial killing cannibal during their first, and only, time together.

“She might still come around. I don’t know I can blame her, Alana,” Jack admitted. 

Both Will and Alana glared at Jack’s remark, though for vastly different reasons. Alana’s hand fell away from her face and gripped the arms of the chair as she scowled at the comment, and she nearly hissed when she spoke.

“Can you imagine the people who will line up to adopt the child of Hannibal Lecter?” 

Will’s mouth dampened as nausea rolled through him in a strangling wave. Hannibal had been an orphan once; Will had seen with his own eyes the home the Lecter family left behind when all that remained of them was a single boy who’d cut his teeth on grown men. 

Jack shifted on his feet, shoes scuffing the wood, as he shot back, “They couldn’t be worse than a psychopath who used a baby to skirt the death penalty.”

Will brought his fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose-- a good excuse to close his eyes for a few blessed seconds. He needed to get out of the office, away from the two debating the future of a child he hadn’t known to expect before twenty minutes ago. Cycling between wild spinning and numbness, Will craved the privacy his slice of wilderness would permit so that he could comb through news stories-- and his own memories-- without witnesses. 

“We have a few months remaining. We will find a way to keep this child safe,” Alana affirmed. Will could feel her looking at him as she chose each word carefully.

“And Hannibal will end up where he belongs-- alone in a cell for the rest of his life,” Jack added firmly. 

Will opened his eyes again and looked at the center of the room. Alana and Jack seemed to be playing a version of tug-of-war with Will squarely in the center; they would both be terribly disappointed when he could neither abide by Jack’s unerring sense of justice nor Alana’s pity. 

“I’m going to go clear my head,” Will said to the room. He had pushed himself away from the wall and was slipping around Jack before the other two could respond with another plea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love hearing from everyone! Your kind and funny words are the best <3


	3. Chapter 3

A trial the magnitude of Hannibal’s drew reporters of all stripes, from national news organizations to TattleCrime wannabes. The funny thing about hosting a prolific serial killer and hordes of bloodthirsty journalists was that courts tended to create distinct flows of foot traffic that gave officers plenty of space to transport criminals while sacrificing everyone else to the masses. Will set his gaze low and froze his brow and mouth into matching hard lines as he gazed out at the gauntlet he was preparing to walk.

The crowd of reporters had thinned a bit since the morning, but the news crews were still butted up against one another and small-time reporters with cell phones and notepads nearly stepped on each other’s toes to rush closer to the front walkway. Will vaguely noticed the crowd of civilians interspersed in clusters; tear-stained faces and angry, hand-painted signs alluded to their identities, though Will had no interest in becoming acquainted with them. One sign in particular depicted a man in a cartoonish black-and-white striped prison suit looking out from a swimming pool-sized frying pan; the text above the image read _Cook the Cannibal_ , which seemed both uninspired and factually inaccurate-- Hannibal would never choose the electric chair. Will imagined Hannibal would be terribly amused by the arts-n-crafts style signs being stabbed into the air by his victims’ friends and family, who were, in the good doctor’s estimation, far better off without their dearly departed. 

On numb legs, Will forced his body through the throng, ignoring the shouts of his name. Cutting through the raucous crowd, he caught whiffs of scents heightened by long hours in the sticky early summer heat and the tension of the day. Omegas in the news industry-- in most professions where being aggressive was perceived as a benefit-- tended to mask their scents, but alphas could be counted on to posture at every turn. Metal and acrid smoke wafted across the courthouse lawn, and a surge of adrenaline made Will’s limbs tingle and his heart beat faster. After more than a decade working with law enforcement in some capacity, the smell of confrontational alphas competing with one another rarely affected him, but each individual alpha’s body assaulted Will’s senses today. The animal impulse to growl and bear his teeth twisted his face into a deeper scowl as he shouldered his way beyond the mob. Will wanted nothing more than to sink his teeth into the flesh of one of the well-heeled men who crowded and shouted questions about arrests and Italy and things they knew nothing of. The only upside to the news crews’ selfish impulses was that they were too concerned with losing their staked-out spots to give chase as Will broke away-- all except the redhead in a black sleeveless turtleneck top and plaid skirt. 

“Agent Graham!” she called as she clicked behind him, high heels tapping the pavement. “Will Graham!”

Will continued walking without so much as a hitch in his step. 

“Was Dr. Lecter insane when he was your therapist?” she yelled after him. No response. 

“Why did he save your life?” she tried again. Will didn’t turn. 

Finally, her voice broke through his determined disregard: “Whose name will be on the birth certificate?”

Will stopped in his tracks and turned halfway, just enough to look back at Freddie. She took a few steps closer, shoulders back and chin up, but stopped almost ten feet from the glowering man. 

“You’re the expert, Freddie. You tell me.”

Freddie’s smirk grated against Will’s raw nerves. 

“Dr. Du Maurier claims she was brainwashed into believing she was Lydia Fell. No sense of obligation on her part.”

A breath hissed between Will’s clenched teeth. “Bedelia’s only commitment is to herself.”

“I didn’t realize you two were on a first-name basis. Have a nice time in Italy?” she asked with a grin. 

Will bit the inside corner of his lip to stop the snarky reply that formed there. He didn’t need TattleCrime quoting him as offering Freddie a seat of honor at Hannibal’s next European excursion. 

“You’ll find my answer in the court transcripts,” Will responded when he could trust his tongue again.   
Freddie’s smile didn’t falter as she shook her head. “No, I won’t.”

He didn’t give Freddie another chance to mash around for the right buttons to press to get what she wanted. 

Will kept a quick pace until he reached the public parking garage and got into his car. He drove white-knuckling the steering wheel and looking compulsively in the rearview mirror, knowing he wouldn’t find anything there but too anxious to stop checking. Arriving home to the sounds of his dogs greeting him from behind the front door and the familiar scents of cedar, salt, and frozen air-- alway icy, even in the heat-- released some of the tension that had settled in his neck and across his shoulders throughout the day. He didn’t realize how tightly he’d kept his jaw clenched until he opened his mouth to take a breath deep enough to stretch the muscles in his abdomen. 

If he tried, Will could almost smell a second scent, one of dry vanilla and burning maple.

He shook off the phantom scent and entered his home, letting his patchwork family run loose in a blur of fur and motion. Will remembered when Winston would stop to look up at Will each time he’d arrive home while the others ran past them. The dog didn’t do that now; instead, he loped along with the others, body propelled forward by the combined excitement of the group. Will watched them run for a few minutes but couldn’t keep his mind quiet enough to focus on the sight. He went into his house, retrieved his laptop, and collapsed into one of the weathered chairs on the front porch, the sounds of all seven dogs scampering and playing in the yard serving as his soundtrack. 

The _Times, Washington Post, NPR,_ and _Atlantic_ had extensively covered the news that “Hannibal the Cannibal” was expecting. The earliest articles reported only that a trashy crime blog had released a sensational piece making outlandish claims; these stories were quickly followed by reports confirming that Freddie Lounds was not, in fact, lying. Will imagined those stories were typed out with stiff fingers and gritted teeth as real journalists reluctantly ate crow. Next, approximately two days after the initial wave, a round of articles appeared essentially reporting that there was nothing new to report-- no statements being issued, no new photos displaying a growing midsection, nor any new insights courtesy of TattleCrime. Heaven forbid the media had to focus on the trial for a full week, Will thought bitterly. 

One week before Will was called to the stand, Chilton, Alana, and the prosecution team published careful statements in regard to the unending media hunt for details about Hannibal. Frederick and Alana stated that any inmate in their care would receive appropriate medical treatment-- whatever the condition may be-- and emphasized that even serial killers had a right to privacy insofar as HIPAA was concerned. The prosecution echoed much the same sentiments, though they did add in an extra line vaguely stating that murderers took all forms but that the truth would triumph in the end. They assured the public that Dr. Hannibal Lecter would be held fully responsible for his atrocities. 

Five days before Will took the stand, Bedelia had spoken to a local reporter-- one that would be intimidated by her, no doubt-- and made her now well-known claim that her memory was so impacted by Hannibal’s manipulations that she simply couldn’t say if the unborn child was hers. The trauma, apparently, prevented her from developing any maternal attachment to the cells forming into a recognizable shape in Hannibal’s body; she expressed no interest in raising the child but was sure to add that her goal was for the child to grow up in a healthy, stable environment. Will read between the lines: _If I have it my way, I’ll ship the infant off in a closed adoption and hope for the best. Don’t call me during my book tour._

Only three days earlier, Hannibal’s defense team issued their own ridiculous statement asking for sympathy and understanding while alluding to the possibility that the dozens of well-executed murders over the years were, in part, due to a hormonal imbalance that was entirely beyond the doctor’s control but that would now be tempered by the incoming bundle of joy. Besides being an antiquated notion, it was patently untrue that Hannibal had ever been driven to homicide by unmet reproductive desires. The thought caused Will to bark a loud, dry laugh that startled Buster, who had come to rest by his feet on the porch. 

“Sorry,” Will mumbled to the grumpy dog sprawled on his back.

The same night that Hannibal’s attorney issued his absurd statement to the press, Freddie Lounds published her second notable article on the topic. This one recounted Bedelia’s history and cast doubt on her claims of PTSD-driven amnesia; in the same article, Freddie reported that an unnamed source from within the BSHCI was adamant that Hannibal never named Bedelia, or anyone else, as the donor of his fetus’s second chromosome. He had, allegedly, been uncharacteristically silent on the topic-- or, as Freddie had written in her latest headline, “Pregnant Cannibal Remains Mum on Paternity.” 

After two hours of reading, Will supposed he was caught up to the precise moment when he himself reentered the picture in the form of a witness testimony. While he couldn’t say that knowing more about what had occurred over the previous month was doing his sanity any good, he could at least understand the larger context for Freddie’s fishing exploration that afternoon. Freddie was smart, even if she was a thorn in the side of humanity, but her pursuit of Will indicated she was not entirely certain of her growing suspicions. She lacked evidence and wanted Will to react in a way that she could build her theories on in the meantime.

Whether Freddie truly believed he was the father or not, Will could feel in each vibrating cell that he would soon be a father-- again. If there’d been anything in his stomach, he would have vomited it over the porch railing.

Will whistled to call the dogs to the porch and ushered them all into the house, locking the door behind them. The impulse to test every lock and scan the horizon for enemies was still humming through his veins. Will boiled chicken and rice for his family of dogs; as he watched the bubbling, boiling water rise into a foam, he grew angrier at the entire situation he found himself in. His ire was as much for himself as it was for the baby who did not ask to be brought into a world like this one. He counted off the people he hated as he stirred: 

Bedelia, for always escaping Hannibal untouched, even as she was drawn to violence like a moth to a flame.

Freddie, for finding every opportunity to cut Will open and extract each bloody, dark thing she found inside for all of the world to see. 

Jack, for neither letting Will go nor making any attempt to mitigate the damage he caused. 

Hannibal, for being a man Will couldn’t compel himself to hate at all even after all of the bloodshed between them. 

But mostly, Will hated himself, for never entirely extricating himself from the binds he and Hannibal wrapped themselves in and tripped on at every turn. 

Now, their bond had a heartbeat. 

Will braced himself over the sink this time as he began to dry heave in earnest. There was tangible proof of each shameful thread of his and Hannibal’s connection, and no matter how far he ran from Hannibal or how securely the other man was locked away, their past would remain alive and well-- walking, talking, breathing, living. Unless, of course, the baby was harmed or worse…, which somehow made Will’s stomach cramp tighter as he leaned forward and spit into the basin. Inarguably, the best and most reasonable option for the child would be to grow up far away from the chaos its parents had created in the name of mutual understanding and destruction. Yet, Will couldn’t shake the sense that Alana was right to question the fuzzy plan: What kinds of people might angle for the chance to raise the offspring of The Chesapeake Ripper? No matter how secure the adoption process would supposedly be, what would stop someone made in the mold of Mason Verger from paying the right people to get what they wanted? And what would prevent the Freddie Lounds of the world from slithering their way to the truth? 

A watercolor-soft image of a toddler with a mess of dark hair and sharp brown eyes plastered itself onto the walls of Will’s brain, and his chest constricted until he ached at the thought of not being able to _protect_. His lungs refused to fill at the prospect of not only surrendering the round-cheeked baby of his imagination to strangers but also never so much as seeing or touching or even scenting it. He foresaw the nights spent wondering if it was a boy or a girl, what its name was, whose eyes it had, if it liked fishing, if it had a disturbingly keen sense of smell, if it had inherited Will’s empathy disorder and ate lunch alone every day by choice to silence the cacophony in its developing brain... 

Will flipped the heat off and left the pot to cool on the stove as he retreated to the living room, hands gripped into his hair. He popped his laptop open again, pulled up a browser, and typed into the search bar. He needed to at least know the sex of the child-- his child-- if he was to spend the rest of his life writing stories in his mind about what might be, but he honestly had no real idea of when that detail could be discerned. He knew very little about fetal development at all, truthfully, and he felt a sting of shame at that-- another failing. Most of the sites that appeared among the search results were geared toward the parent giving birth and were laden with cutesy lingo that, in Will’s mind, rather undermined the significance of bringing an entire new human into the world. Will clicked on the least offensive title and, thankfully, found an article backed with pastel colors but written in relatively plain language; each month of a normal pregnancy was mapped out with a paragraph about the symptoms of the pregnant individual on one side of the timeline and a paragraph about fetal development on the opposite side. Will ignored the blurb about symptoms-- Hannibal could very well deal with heartburn and aches and pains after putting Will in the hospital-- but sought out the entry for a five-month-old fetus. He read transfixed by the words and the images they constructed: 

_During the fifth month of pregnancy, your baby will grow vernix (a greasy protective coating on its skin) and lanugo (fine hair). Rest assured that most of the lanugo will be gone by birth. Many parents find this month particularly exciting because of the more noticeable fetal developments. First, this is the period when your little one’s gender will become apparent-- if he or she isn’t shy for the ultrasound! Another thrilling part of month five is that your baby will increase in activity-- kicking, flipping, hiccuping, and thumb-sucking are all normal, and you’ll finally be able to feel these movements in months five or six. Your baby’s sleep schedule will begin to normalize during weeks 16 through 20, and he or she will respond to noises from outside of the womb. Don’t be surprised if a loud noise wakes the baby and prompts movement. By the end of this month, your baby will be the size of a sweet potato and have more defined characteristics, such as unique fingerprints and head hair._

Will’s eyes remained dry until he came to the end of the entry and imagined seeing a baby the size of a sweet potato, hair already coming in wisps, sucking its thumb in a perfect black-and-white image. 

A kicking, hiccuping baby who could hear his voice giving a testimony but that he would never touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just going with the flow on this story, and apparently that flow is a bit sad right now, haha. Thank you for reading so far and for your lovely comments! <3


	4. Chapter 4

The ceiling above Will’s bed looked eerily the same at 4 AM as it had at midnight. Time trickled by, and a pang of deranged panic clenched Will’s chest for a hair of a second as he was gripped by the notion the sun would never rise. He’d be trapped in the darkness for all eternity as the shadows above him formed a cruel Rorschach test of phantom sonogram images. Will closed his eyes and swallowed harshly; he took a deep breath, counting to six, then released the air in an eight-count. When he opened his eyes again, the ceiling had returned to a bland canvas, and Will saw two more minutes had passed. Sighing, he flipped onto his stomach and tried to convince his tense body that sleep was possible.

When he closed his eyes, his mind presented him again with the image that had haunted him all night: The round form of a swaddled infant. He was too tired to fight it any longer, and he eventually drifted into a broken sleep. Dreams of the hospital room he had been confined to after being stabbed in Hannibal’s kitchen slid into dreams of a sterile nursery filled with cribs of dozing newborns, separated from him by a pane of glass and a squadron of watchful nurses. The ache of the latter dream, Will found, was at least equal to the remembered pain of the first. 

By the time he jerked awake at 6:53 AM, the sun barely lighting the overcast sky, Will was certain of what he needed to do. Well, he was certain of what he needed to do over the next few hours, which was more than he could often say for himself as of late. 

He showered, shaved his emerging beard down to a thin layer of well-shaped scruff, and brushed his wet hair back out of his eyes. When he dressed, he chose clean lines and dark blues. Even his shoes were selected because they showed the least wear and tear. Will’s stomach was tied into an unforgiving knot that didn’t allow him to even consider eating, but when he caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror, his guarded eyes and tidy appearance reflected nothing but the same cold shell of a man who entered and exited the courthouse the previous day without so much as flinching at the horde of reporters. 

Driving to Baltimore on a Saturday morning was a far less stressful experience than commuting on a Friday afternoon, but the trip felt twice as long. Will gripped the steering wheel and cursed under his breath at each driver who got in his way; this stretch of land was all that kept him from the BSHCI, and he would have set every centimeter of it alight with fire if it meant the road would collapse and shrink the distance between where he was and where he needed to be. 

Will parked in a spot far from the main entrance, hoping not to draw attention to himself. The building always made a cold shiver run down his spine, but that morning, the sensation was closer to a freezing burn. He scanned the parking lot as he walked and was relieved to find Frederick Chilton’s vehicle instead of Alana Bloom’s. He had hazarded to guess that Alana would not be supervising the day after being trapped in court for hours; Will had noticed how tired she looked in the attorney’s office the day before, and he knew it was not just because of the workload. He didn’t imagine Margot would allow Alana-- carrying the all-important Verger heir-- to overexert herself in the slightest when Frederick Chilton was perfectly capable of continuing his reign of terror for a few months longer. 

Will couldn’t as readily summon that sense of relief, though, when moments later he stood face-to-face with Frederick Chilton and watched a knowing smile dance across the man’s countenance. 

“I cannot say I am surprised to see you here,” Chilton greeted smugly before Will was through his office door. “Dr. Bloom believed you would stay away until long after the dust from the trial had settled. Years, in fact.”

“What did you believe?” Will asked gruffly, unamused. 

Frederick smiled without showing teeth. 

“Dr. Bloom did not care to ask for my opinion, but I personally thought we would see you grace our halls within the year,” Chilton supplied. He added slyly with an eager gleam in his eyes, “No more than nine months, if I am being precise.”

The growl that built in the back of Will’s chest was swallowed down. He wouldn’t give Frederick the satisfaction of confirming his suspicion so plainly.

“I wouldn’t think you’d have time for speculation, Frederick. You are fabricating an insanity defense for the man who framed you for murder, aren’t you?” Will questioned in a flat voice. 

Frederick huffed a disbelieving laugh in return and walked in small, quick steps toward his desk. 

“I am not the only one he framed, if you recall,” Chilton replied, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he sat down in his polished leather chair. “I should hardly think you would like to compare our present relationships with Hannibal Lecter.”

“Hannibal didn’t ask you to do this. He doesn’t trade in favors,” Will stated definitively, coming to stand in front of Frederick’s desk. He forced his form to remain relaxed, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stared down at the seated man. He was pleased to hear his voice take a sharper edge when he continued, “You must have great faith in your hospital. Whatever became of Matthew Brown?” 

Frederick’s smile faded as the subject shifted closer to his own mortality, and his eyes went wide as he stared at Will as though he could not fathom how clueless one grown man could be. 

Chilton spoke rapidly when he responded, “Quite the contrary, in fact. I hold no delusion that Hannibal will remain in any institution unless he chooses to do so. When he decides he has tired of whatever game it is the two of you are playing, I intend to be far from the top of his menu.”

Will cocked his head to the side and watched Chilton, identifying the panic in his eyes and his scent.

“Then you should have no issue with me seeing him,” Will said coolly. “Alone.”

Frederick scoffed and leaned forward over his desk. 

“Preparing for Hannibal’s eventual escape and facilitating it are entirely different matters.”

“No guards, no cameras,” Will commanded, ignoring Chilton’s disbelief. 

“Have you at last lost your mind, Mr. Graham?” Chilton asked in a higher voice than before. “Hannibal Lecter is a cannibal, and you-- you are testifying against him in court! If the media catches the slightest whiff of duplicity, they’ll hang us both with him!”

“Which is why there can be no record,” Will snapped, clapping his hands down on the desk and making Frederick flinch. Will passingly wondered if it was Frederick’s fear or the fact Will was an agitated alpha and Frederick was a cornered omega that caused such a stricken look to cross his face. Frederick swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the action. He kept his eyes on Will but his mouth was fixed in a frown, making the man look both scared and petulant.

“A guard outside the door, cameras on,” Frederick countered. 

Skin heating and teeth grinding together, Will demanded, “A guard down the hall, audio off.”

Chilton looked ready to argue again when an almost inaudible growl electrified the air in the room. It was cut off quickly-- Will hadn’t meant to allow it to escape him-- but the effects were immediate. The scent of charred wood permeated the space between them.

A slight chill of embarrassment made Will stand straight and return his hands to his pockets. He didn’t swing being an alpha around like a club, and he certainly did not use his biology to threaten omegas. He had never lost control of his baser reactions except in rare, chaotic circumstances during his time in law enforcement. Now, his anger seemed just below the surface of his skin even as he strove to compose himself; he had no explanation other than that the promise of finally being near the unborn child who had already consumed his thoughts was too great to risk losing to Frederick Chilton.

“Fine,” Frederick relented, looking away from Will. “But I expect you to be cooperative when I interview you for my new book.”

Frederick rose and walked past Will without waiting for a response.

Will was already familiar with the standard protocol for visitors at the BSHCI, and he expected to be put through the regular paces: Empty his pockets, walk through the metal detector separating the cells from the bureaucracy, listen to the spiel about how far to stay away from the bars and what the lines on the floor meant, and on and on. Instead, stormed out of his office, leaving Will to glance around then follow the doctor’s path. Chilton unlocked a small vault tucked behind the administrative desk-- where a woman in at least her 70s sat typing away with no interest in whatever it was the two men were doing-- and found a keyring with two keys and a proxy card attached. Frederick closed the vault back and shot Will a steely look as he passed him and proceeded down the long, windowless hallway; once more, Will followed without direction. 

When they came to the end of the hallway, they turned left, natural light streaming into this small stretch of their journey through barred windows, and continued until they reached a set of closed doors. Chilton unlocked them with one of the keys and led them through it; Will tried not to feel unnerved when he saw they were in a secured stairwell that only led upward. They ascended four flights until they reached the final landing and another set of doors labeled with red block letters reading “Level A.” 

It figured their newest monster would be pacing the attic. 

Just beyond the doors, there was a guard station where a single armed man sat at a desk; behind him were sliding glass doors with a proxy card reader blinking a steady yellow light. Will could see through the doors that this hallway stopped in a dead end, and he felt a wave of nausea hit him at the thought of being painfully close to his destination. 

“Dr. Chilton,” the guard greeted with a nod. 

Chilton made a noise that could have passed for either a disinterested greeting or a groan. 

The guard looked at Will and started to push the visitor sign-in ledger toward him, but Chilton waved it away and swiped his proxy card, the light turning green long enough for the two men to pass through then closing automatically behind them. Will noticed that the spaces connected to the short hallway were not closed away by bars but by steel doors; the heavy doors had a proxy card scanner above each knob, and the small window of glass in each was too tinted for Will to see through from where he walked in the center of the hall. Chilton’s pace quickened as they approached the end, and Will’s eyes landed on the final entrance: A set of black oak double doors trimmed in gold detailing. This entry had both a card reader and a physical lock mounted on the exterior, and Will looked at Frederick expectantly, eyebrows raised at how distinctly more refined this doorway was than any other.

“I admire your commitment to your own survival,” Will said to the doors in front of them. 

Chilton bristled as he took the proxy card off of the keyring and fully inserted it into the reader. He left it there as he brought one of the keys to the lock.

“You might do well to learn something from it. This room was formerly the therapy center for our most studied offenders, but Hannibal’s incarceration has required hasty retrofitting,” Chilton explained tersely. He added with a glare, “The next time you convince a serial killer to surrender himself, you might call first.”

Hannibal was probably quite honored to have been worth the extra trouble and expense. 

Chilton’s jaw tightened as he turned the key in the lock, and he looked like he was tempted to say something regrettable to Will. When he glanced up at Will’s intensely focused gaze and flared nostrils, he seemed to think better of it and instead shoved open one door. As if from a distance, Will saw Chilton motion to the guard who was just beyond the doorway, seated on an ornate chair with a heavy wooden frame and golden upholstery. Over his pounding heartbeat, he barely heard Chilton tell the young guard he was dismissed for the next thirty minutes because Dr. Lecter was to have a therapy session. 

Had Will been less distracted, he would have glowered at Chilton’s distasteful joke, but he could see light illuminating the dark room from some point further inside and itched to take a full look at the place where Hannibal-- and, by extension, his child-- slept and ate and lived. The guard exited without question, though he did take a second look at Will as he passed by. Frederick lingered, blocking the doorway, until the guard had passed through the sliding doors at the end of the hall. Then, he turned to Will.

“I will return in thirty minutes. For the duration of your visit, I will supervise the cameras myself,” Frederick told him in as professional a voice as he could maintain while essentially assuring Will that he was going to tamper with his own recordings per their agreement. As he held the door open for Will and stepped aside, he added, “I _would_ caution you to avoid standing too near the glass.”

Will entered as Frederick watched, giving him a wide berth. Will did not allow himself the luxury of pausing to absorb the scene ahead of him until he heard the door shut and lock behind him. The room was much larger than Will had expected, and the entire front half was what could be called a cell only in the strictest definition of the term. It was contained, yes, but it was bigger than Will’s living room and paneled in white wood. Two tall bookshelves were built into the walls, a drafting table was angled neatly in one corner, and a light wood dining table with a single chair behind it was centered in the middle of the room. Above, a skylight allowed the gray glow of the overcast morning to stream down on the man standing in the center of the cell. 

As his eyes devoured the scene, Will’s legs did finally halt him midway to the wall of glass protecting visitors from the creature housed here. It may have been the scent that stopped Will, a familiar sweetened wood that favored the vanilla of old books over the crackle of a fire now; it may have been the sight of Hannibal meeting his eyes fully and holding them, so different from their time together in the courtroom the day before. Whatever it was that froze Will in place, he had no doubt what caused his lungs to seize in his chest and his breathing to stop: The stiff, white fabric stretched across a midsection that housed the sweet potato-sized baby Will’s brain and blood had already latched onto desperately and disastrously. In court, concealed by layers made to fit well but not too close to the body, the sight of softness in the man’s otherwise hardened body was jarring; here, the jumpsuit that would have fit unforgivingly even without being five months deep into a pregnancy seemed to put the roundedness on display. 

Will wanted to throw up at the monumental reality of the situation; he wanted to snarl at the lingering scent of the guard in this sacred place; he wanted to lay his hands on firm flesh and whisper through skin. Hannibal watched him, arms clasped behind his back, with a hardened expression. 

“Gloating is typically reserved for after the trial has concluded, Will,” Hannbial remarked dispassionately as he took a few leisurely steps forward. 

Will opened his mouth to speak, but no words could escape his tight throat. He swallowed back the thick salt of unshed tears and let his brow knit together. Only two days ago, allowing Hannibal even the slightest glimpse of the pain Will was still capable of would have seemed unfathomable. Now, he could not do anything but stare, his emotions cycling across his face in the lines and twitches of muscle.

He approached the glass numbly. Hannibal had stopped a few feet from the transparent wall, and as Will came closer, he watched Hannibal’s eyes dart to the corner of the room. A mounted camera watched the two men silently. Will should have cared that Frederick was observing them-- that he could still be recording them and probably was. It seemed such a petty concern now, as he intellectually began to understand the magnitude of the mess he had made of his life while his blood sang with sweet satisfaction. 

“Hannibal,” Will murmured, a question in his voice, though he did not know what he meant to ask. 

The man behind the glass came closer until he was just beyond the wall. The sweet vanillic scent strengthened as his body blocked two of the large holes cut into the glass. 

“Frederick has been a surprisingly gracious host,” Hannibal said conversationally. “My previous visits to the hospital were no reassurance.”

The reference to Will’s time incarcerated seemed to bounce against Will’s armor and roll away to a far corner of the room. Hannibal’s brow relaxed, but his angular jawline remained tightly held. They were maybe three feet apart now, and Will noticed Hannibal was also taking long, deep breaths to collect Will’s scent in his lungs. For the first time since he’d entered the room, Will glanced away from Hannibal and saw the space not as a ridiculously cushy cell but as Hannibal’s home. His stomach flipped at the thought, and images of Hannibal’s Baltimore residence-- so thoroughly melded to the man and his tastes-- flickered across Will’s mind. Hannibal had his books and his drawings still; he had his mind palace, always, and the bare essentials of survival. But now he was exposed to the world, unseen yet horribly visible, and hidden away from the sunlight, save a single opening in the ceiling. 

Hannibal deserved it, of course, but Will was certain his child did not.

The small bed along one wall, in particular, caught Will’s attention. If the thin mattress and metal frame weren’t already causing physical discomfort as the Hannibal’s weight increased and concentrated low on his stomach, it soon would. Will could not ignore that it was outfitted with only a single blue blanket. His eyes narrowed at the sight and his teeth clenched together with a snap: Even Hannibal, the least stereotypical omega Will had possibly ever encountered, would eventually need the comfort of _some_ type of nest. During his reading the previous night, the countless websites he had found about omegan pregnancies were quite clear on the point that protective instincts kicked in no later than the second trimester, and that included an instinctual desire for a space tucked away from all possible threats. There was no room for such vulnerability here, and he could not imagine the undue stress that might be experienced because of it as the pregnancy wore on. A sharp exhale and fisted hands gave away Will’s frustration.

Hannibal broke through Will’s thoughts, commenting in an even voice, “I’ve survived far worse.”

“Not like this,” Will answered sharply, meeting Hannibal’s eyes again. They were softer, warmer now, and it disarmed him, the desire to please and comfort and protect being given a crumb of hope that the man-- his mate, it would seem-- was truly okay. 

Will’s own voice was unguarded and weak when it broke through the constriction of his chest and throat to make Hannibal a promise he shouldn’t owe the man: “I didn’t know.” 

Hannibal’s eyes dropped to the floor, considering the words. His face did not show any hint of emotion, but his inability to hold Will’s eyes spoke loudly enough for them both. 

“News travels slowly to Wolf Trap,” Hannibal quipped, still not looking up.

“I avoided it,” Will said with a hint of remorse.

The man behind the glass smiled grimly as he quoted, “‘I don't want to know where you are or what you do. I don't want to think about you anymore.’ Well done.”

Will’s eyes closed tightly at hearing his words echoed back to him. He had meant them at the time, knowing in the pit of his stomach that they were as untrue as they were necessary. His stab had, at last, landed squarely in Hannibal’s chest. 

“Ignoring what Freddie Lounds dredged from the bottom of the well isn’t a cause for celebration,” Will refuted. He wouldn’t apologize for his words because he didn’t regret them. “Has Bedelia paid you a visit?”

A grin turned the corners of Hannibal’s lips upward, and he returned his gaze to Will’s. 

“I don’t expect Bedelia will come to socialize. She might regress if we were to speak for too long,” Hannibal answered gamely. “I suspect she will have a representative call in her stead in a few months’ time. I’ve made no claim or request of her, though, so my attorney has advised me against DNA testing.” 

Hannibal’s meaning was clear: He had no intention of exposing the truth, but Bedelia-- along with Freddie Lounds and Chilton, it seemed-- at least questioned the child’s parentage. The fragility of their predicament struck Will as almost humorous: Both the forces that sought to protect their secret and those that would reveal it were acting entirely out of self-interest. For the first time, Hannibal was the most altruistic one of the group, and if that wasn’t patently hilarious, Will didn’t know what was. 

He sobered instantly as he scented the air and his guilt returned.

“How is…?” Will trailed off, sighing.

Hannibal watched Will flounder for a moment before saving him. 

“Unremarkable,” Hannibal replied, “which is preferable in this instance. Movement became palpable only a few days ago. He wasn’t fond of court-- too noisy.”

A soft sound somewhere between a sob and a gasp passed Will’s lips. His hand grasped the smooth edge of the hole in the glass, skin whitening from the pressure. Hannibal saw the transgression but made no move to touch him.

He.

A son. 

A son who already disliked other people. 

Will smiled at the thought, and the watery image of a scowling baby boy washed away all other visions of the future. 

“We haven’t much time,” Hannibal commented absently. 

Will nodded, nothing more to say but pained at the notion of leaving. Without thinking, he turned and slid down the glass, coming to sit on the ground with his back pressed against the wall. A few moments later, the sound of movement from the other side let Will know Hannibal was lowering himself to sit identically on the other side. Will imagined he could feel the man’s body heat through the glass as he leaned his head back, eyes closed, and drank their mingled scent from the air.

That was where the two men were when the door opened and Chilton, not looking directly at them, called into the room, “Therapy’s over for today, gentlemen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your kudos, comments, and just plain reading along! It's odd writing paternal Will but also kind of nice? 🧡🧡

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm trying my hand at A/B/O again-- this time with a side of mpreg! I actually put the premise of this story out as a prompt a while ago, but I didn't get any takers. It's been taking up space in my brain since, so I figured I'd give it a shot myself. I don't know if this will be any *better* than last time, but it's a fun way to challenge my writing skills while I get my head back in the game to finish my long work (Gentler Means). We'll see what happens! =)


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